Almost as good as an outcrop

Cutting Edge:
Heather Macdonald is one of the founders of On the Cutting Edge, a multi-institutional collaboration that offers a variety of resources to college-level geoscience teachers through a web site and a series of workshops.

On the Cutting Edge: professional development for geoscience teachers

by Joseph McClain
| June 7, 2012

Heather Macdonald has always been
eager to get her new geosciences students out of the classroom and into the
field—especially if there is a handy outcrop.

“Outcrops give us a great picture
of what life was like in the past,” she says. “Here in Virginia, I take my
students to an outcrop over in Chippokes State Park. We spend time looking at
the sediments and the fossils. I love to see the moment when the students get
what it means: This area was covered by an ocean millions of years ago. That’s
a great conceptual leap.”

Macdonald, Chancellor Professor of
Geology at William & Mary, likes to quote the writer John McPhee on how an
appreciation for outcrops and other aspects of geology allow us to ‘inhabit
scenes no one ever saw.’ In the years since joining the William & Mary
faculty in 1983, she has worked to increase the numbers of geologists
inhabiting unseen worlds by filling three overlapping roles: practicing
scientist, teacher to undergraduate students and mentor to early career faculty,
post-docs, and graduate students across the nation.

Outcrops aren’t as handy to all of
America’s teachers of earth science as they are in Virginia. In 2002, Macdonald
joined a cooperative venture of like-minded geosciences faculty to launch On the Cutting Edge, a STEM-outreach program for fellow geoscience faculty.
It’s a professional-development initiative that integrates a resource-rich
website with a series of workshops around the country for current and future geoscience
faculty. Macdonald’s collaborators for On the Cutting Edge are fellow
geoscientists Cathryn Manduca of Carleton College, David Mogk of Montana State
University and Barbara Tewksbury of Hamilton College. New members of the
leadership team include Rachel Beane of Bowdoin College, David McConnell of
North Carolina State University, Michael Wysession of Washington University and
Katryn Wiese of San Francisco City College.

Several workshops
each year

The group holds several workshops
a year around the country as well as virtual workshops, online journal clubs,
and webinars; a workshop for Early Career Geoscience Faculty is scheduled at
William & Mary in summer of 2012. More than 2,000 faculty members, graduate
students and post-docs from more than 450 colleges and universities have
participated in Cutting Edge workshops.

The Cutting Edge website expands
the functionality and reach of the workshops. The site was developed and is
maintained at the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College,
where Manduca is the director.

“The website is built from the
workshops,” Macdonald explained, “but it also extends the reach of the
workshops, making materials and ideas and resources accessible to geoscience
faculty, both current and future.”

A one-stop source for
landslides, earthquakes or tsunamis

The website contains information
and materials organized into some 40 topical sections. The resources include
more than 1,500 activities contributed by faculty in the geosciences. The
activities include ideas for interactive classroom discussions, field exercises
and lab activities. “If you are going to teach a class on landslides or
earthquakes or tsunamis, you can go to our website and look for resources,”
Macdonald said. “As you prepare for the class, you can see what other
geosciences faculty have done on that topic.”

On the Cutting Edge has been a
success by any measure, attracting $9 million in support from the National
Science Foundation and a number of awards. In 2010, the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recognized the web component of On the
Cutting Edge with its Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE).
Macdonald was a finalist for the 2012 Robert Foster Cherry Award sponsored by
Baylor University, one of the top honors in American higher education.